UPDATE: Sen. Steve Daines said on Friday that he’ll return to Washington D.C. by private jet on his daughter’s wedding day if his vote is needed to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Senate Republicans will be out one vote on Saturday if they press ahead with plans to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a U.S. Supreme Court judge that day.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines is set to attend his daughter’s wedding on Saturday, and he’s going to walk her down the aisles no matter what happens with the confirmation, NBC Montana reporter Maritsa Georgiou tweeted on Thursday night.
But it’s still possible that the vote could be extended in order to accommodate Daines’ attendance, according to CNN.
The senator told the network that the Republicans could hold the confirmation vote overnight and allow him to vote when he returns to D.C. from Montana, which is where the wedding is happening.
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“It will probably be early morning,” Daines, who intends to vote for Kavanaugh, told the network.
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“We’re taking it a day at a time to see what happens.”
Daines has read the FBI report following the bureau’s investigation of sexual misconduct allegations levelled against Kavanaugh, and said he didn’t personally see any proof to back up the claims.
READ MORE: Kavanaugh writes in op-ed that he may have been ‘too emotional’ in Senate testimony — WSJ
He has stood by Kavanaugh all through the confirmation process.
CNN added that it’s not clear what will happen with the vote on Saturday, which is expected to happen at around 5 p.m. ET.
But Fox News reported that Daines called Kavanaugh and assured him that arrangements are being made to “get him across the finish line as needed.”
Should the vote proceed without Daines, the Republicans would have 50 potential votes to the Democrat caucus’ 49.
However, a number of Republican senators have been on the fence regarding Kavanaugh, including Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
If one of those senators voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, then that would create a 49-49 tie, which could be broken by Vice-President Mike Pence.
However Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, also said he still hasn’t decided how he’ll vote on the nomination.
READ MORE: FBI wraps up investigation into Brett Kavanaugh, but little is known about what they found
Both Collins and Flake have said they thought the FBI’s investigation into Kavanaugh was thorough, with the latter saying it did not find further evidence to support the allegations.
Murkowski, meanwhile, spent Thursday meeting with women in her office in Alaska.
The women she met with included survivors of sexual assault, said MSNBC correspondent Garrett Haake.
Meanwhile, ex-Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, speaking in Boca Raton, Fla., said Kavanaugh is not qualified to sit on America’s highest court, The New York Times reported.
Though he once believed Kavanaugh was qualified, Stevens said he changed his mind after seeing how he performed before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, saying his testimony showed “a potential bias involving enough potential litigants before the court that he would not be able to perform his full responsibilities,” he said.
“It’s not healthy to get a new justice that can only do a part-time job.”
- With files from The Associated Press and Reuters
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